TerraDrive Universe talk:Copyright
=Proposed?= Intellectual Property Ownership All content published on this wiki, known as the TerraDrive Universe, is owned by Technomancer Press, copyright 2007. It is licensed to the general public under the Creative Commons (CC) License, Attribution 3.0. Agreement All entities submitting content to the TerraDrive Universe warrant they own the rights to said content, and agree to transfer all rights to said content to Technomancer Press, LLC. In return, Technomancer Press agrees to license all content comprising the TerraDrive Universe to the general public under the Creative Commons (CC) License, Attribution 3.0. =IP Ownership Discussion= Wait a sec. This isn't what was originally discussed. In fact, this isn't what the pages state. McKay 03:54, 8 February 2008 (EST) :Okay, after some analysis. Someone changed Mediawiki:copyrightpage, and altered what it means. Also, the format is wrong, so it means nothing. :Part of the reason I started editing here is that my work was being released under CC:Attribution. A) that legally can't be changed for past edits without my approval and B) That can't ethically be changed for the future without serious community consensus? No one said I was granting ownership to Technomancer Press. I thought it was being owned by the community at large. Can we talk about this some? McKay 04:17, 8 February 2008 (EST) ::As best I can tell you're disputing changes which occured before your first edit? Skarsol 12:18, 8 February 2008 (EST) ::I rolled back your changes as they represent a potentially significant legal change and since there has been no previous discussion on this issue, your changes can not then reflect consensus.Skarsol 14:29, 8 February 2008 (EST) :::I reverted for a couple reasons. :::# Beacuse it wasn't done correctly Okay, yeah, changes to the MW Copyrightpage occured on or before 28 June 2007, which was before I started editing. But it was not done correctly. That page is supposed to be a link to the copyright page, and it wasn't. In fact, it's done incorrectly such that the edit notice says "all contributions to TerraDrive Universe are considered to be released under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0" This was not the place to put random notes, but merely a link to copyright notices. I have fixed what that was supposed to say. Before it was misleading and contradictory. If you'd like more commentary on this, please ask. :::# because it isn't true The change to the TDU copyright page occured on or after 20 July 2007. As a result, I claim that all content submitted before then (which represents over 75% of my edits) was released under CC:A. Anything written before that date is not property of Technomancer Press. Claiming such is incorrect. Because they don't own the content. It was released as CC:A, so they can use it, but they don't own it. I will change the copyright page to reflect this ambiguity. I think that Tony should pipe in here, because this is a serious matter. McKay 03:53, 10 February 2008 (EST) :::I have also changed the content at MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning to reflect this as well. McKay 04:02, 10 February 2008 (EST) ::::What pages are you looking at that I'm not seeing? As best I can tell, both "copyright" pages in question have contained the text "The content is owned by: Technomancer Press, LLC" in some form since June 28, 2007. You even moved a page containing that text on July 5th. In fact, as best I can tell, the Creative Commons license text has never appeared without the Technomancer ownership text. Skarsol 04:45, 10 February 2008 (EST) ::::Please note the text at the top of the copyright page: "When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page" You're making unilateral declarations without even a pretense of discussion first and obviously without consensus (since thats pretty much you and me, and we're disagreeing. :P) Skarsol 04:45, 10 February 2008 (EST) ::::Additionally, why is this an issue? You seem to be afraid that Technomancer Press will take your contributions, edit them wildly, then sell books based on them, right? They're allowed to do that under the attribution license anyway, although I guess they wouldn't have to credit you?Skarsol 12:58, 10 February 2008 (EST) :::::When I said "TDU Copyright" above, I meant this page. The page that we're on the talk page of. :::::You don't understand how Wiki's work really. Let me clarify. I'm not going to change anything today, just post here. Take (virtually) any page in the wiki. This one should do nicely. Click "edit" Right below the edit box is some text. That's the text about ownership. When someone is editing a wiki, that's the message they see. Admins can change that text. It tells how the content can be used in the future. Right now it says "Please note that all contributions to TerraDrive Universe are considered to be released under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0". What that means is that if someone submits something to the wiki, they are submitting it under that license. Right now it states CC:A. We link to it. "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/". Therefore, if I submit something to the wiki, the content is something that I own, and is my property. Sure other people can do stuff with it, but it remains mine. And if they want to do stuff with it, they have to follow my rules, specifically, they have to attribute me. ::::::I disagree. The edit page warns that anything you submit will be released under CC:A. Anything you submit will be released under CC:A, it just goes through an ownership transfer first. I'll agree that it's confusing.Skarsol 10:13, 11 February 2008 (EST) :::::The page has stated just that. It still states just that. I tried to change it, but you change it back. From what I've learned over the past few days, what Technomancer wants, is that when someone submits content to the wiki, it becomes property of Technomancer Press, but that they will license it under CC:A. That's what I was assuming was consensus. The changes I made to the wiki yesterday (aside from the note on the bottom of the TDU Copyright page) tried to reflect that. You reverted those changes, so I assert you were not following consensus. You still claim that you are following consensus, so maybe there's something I'm not seeing. Also, take a look at that edit notice. There's a bit of a clarification text. It's intended to be a link to a page, but you broke that as well. It currently states "(see REDIRECT TerraDrive Universe:Copyright for details)" It should say "(see TerraDrive Universe:Copyright for details)" That's supposed to be the page where a full explanation of what's going on resides. ::::::Was unaware that page was just used by other pages, fixed. I'll not touch MediaWiki pages in the future. Additionally, never noticed the message on the edit page before and since you hadn't referenced it previously, I could only assume you were talking about the TDU copyright page, thus my confusion.Skarsol 10:09, 11 February 2008 (EST) :::::Yes, the page containing the text "The content is owned by: Technomancer Press, LLC" did exist, but nothing really linked to it. I did a unilateral move on July 5th trying to move all the pages that belonged in the TDU namespace to the right place. It also didn't state that by submitting stuff to the wiki, I was giving the content to TDU. Nothing like that really entered the wiki until the end of July. :::::Next you talked about consensus, I just barely wrote a bit about consensus, and how my most recent changes reflected consensus, and I don't think you understand the changes you were making. But there's a higher principal here than consensus. Fact. The content I submitted before I realized what was going on, is not the property of Technomancer Press. It is my property, and I have released it under CC:A, so they can use it if they credit me. In fact, I stated so on my blog on 4 July. It is wrong to state that all content is property of TP, because it wasn't, so I updated the page to reflect that. :::::Why is this an issue? A couple reasons: :::::#'It's a legal thing'. Claiming ownership of copyright when they don't own content is a violation of the terms of the CC:A. This needs to be fixed, or else lawyers could be coming. :::::#'Attribution'. You were very right about that last point. One thing that really got me interested in editing a lot was the attribution. Sure, they were going to be editing it wildly, then crediting me. That's what I want. I'm somewhat of a writer. I'm not well-known as such, but this seemed like a good place to start. I could submit content, and if someone wanted to write stuff based on what I did, they could, and they could credit me. It'd be a way of getting my name out. I want to be recognized for my work. Quotes from the TDU Press Release "Technomancer Press will write content for TerraDrive (the tabletop version) using the content the players have created." "a fan developed wiki whose content fans will actually see in print." sic That was exciting. I wanted to be recognized for my work. That was the goal. :::::While attribution would be great, that's not my primary concern. I'm really trying to help the wiki be technically correct, to help for further issues. Due to your rollbacks, as the wiki stands now, content submitted is still owned by the contributor. Technomancer Press owns nothing, save what it submitted itself. If this is to be rectified, we've got to do something about it. :::::If you still think that you have good reasons for me being wrong here, please let me know. McKay 03:35, 11 February 2008 (EST) ::::::I think your technical edits are all back in place. I kept being sent to TerraDrive Universe:Copyrights for some reason so I made a redirect there but now I'm no longer being sent there, so meh. I'll let you and Tony fight out the rest since he's appeared.Skarsol 10:20, 11 February 2008 (EST) Mmmkay. This caught me by surprise. Let's see if we can't sort this out. I'll start by talking about the spirit of the copyright notice, and then the letter. The spirit of the notice is that all contributors agree to give all rights to their work to Technomancer Press, LLC, who in return agrees to license said work with a CC Attribution License. The reason why we chose this model is because if you were licensing your work to us, and we had to credit you, doing so would be difficult at best. When we take pieces of narrative from one place or another, we'd have to look back through the edit logs and figure out who contributed what. Who was the first person to describe the drive system of the Widget-class battleship? There might be three dozen contributors that we have to research for a single book. Also, few publishers will publish material for a gaming system they own, that they don't have all the rights to. This is why TSR only bought all rights for submissions to Dragon Magazine, back in the day. Not owning all the rights causes a couple problems: 1) It complicates our ability to sell the IP; 2) It limits our ability to defend the company from lawsuits regarding the IP (as any copyright holders that we published would have to be consulted before we took a course of legal action, and if they didn't agree, that could potentially hurt our position). Therefore, whatever solution we work out will have to end with us owning the IP on the wiki, even if that means I have to release this entire wiki back to its creators and start over from scratch for next year (which would be a shame, I think). Okay, now let's talk about the letter of the agreement. I agree that prior to the new copyright page that went up July 5, that the previous notice may have been confusing (although the copyright notice that appears on every edit page does direct you to the copyright page for details, and that does say "This content owned by Technomancer Press, LLC." but what does "This" mean? I agree that it is ambiguous. Someone may have read the initial notice, and not thought "I better put this on my watchlist in case it changes," and then when it changed, may have been laboring under false assumptions about the ownership of their work. If that happened to me, I'd be pissed. This is an oversight on my part, and I take responsibility for it. From July 5, I feel secure in saying that it was fairly clear that we owned all the content. The copyright page spelled that out pretty well. However, not everyone who was concerned about the ownership may have known that. For those submitters, and for all submissions made prior to July 5, we have a problem. What sort of remedy would you like to see? I'm still gathering information at this stage, and hope to engage interested parties in a discussion that at minimum leaves nobody feeling screwed over by a company they like. TonyHellmann 04:19, 11 February 2008 (EST) :Tony, I understand what you're saying, you don't want to have to credit all the original authors. That makes sense. :Why do you say July 5? The only thing we mentioned that happened on july 5 was the moving of the copyright page. IIRC, It didn't have the "you give us everything you submit" until 28 July (ish). McKay 04:38, 11 February 2008 (EST) ::I misspoke. July 20 is the date that the new notice went up. TonyHellmann 22:10, 13 February 2008 (EST) :I have some legal exp and I discussed this with a contracts lawyer and while we both agree that ownership resides with Technomancer (it being up to the submitter to fully inform themselves as to the terms of submission, even if the information available was unclear (what does "The content" encompass) (you could potentially argue there was no meeting of the minds sufficient to form a contract, but we don't think that's winnable)) something along the lines of a notice in any potential publications similar to "a list of persons who may have contributed to the text can be found at http://www.technomancer-press.com/TerraDrive/index.php?title=Special:Listusers" might make everybody happy? (This does not constitute legal advice, yadda yadda) Skarsol 11:46, 11 February 2008 (EST) ::I don't think I agree Skarsol. I'm very familiar with how Wiki's work, having worked on a number of them. Sure, it's up to the submitter to fully inform themselves of the terms of submission, and I looked at the submission information. It said that by submitting, I was releasing my work under CC:A. "Please note that all contributions to TerraDrive Universe are considered to be released under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0" If you edit a page on Wikipedia it states "You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL*" GFDL is very different from CC:A, specifically that there does not need to be an owner of any sort. It is a very free and liberal license. No attribution is ever required. McKay 13:39, 11 February 2008 (EST) :::Compare these two statements: "Please note that all contributions to TerraDrive Universe are considered to be released under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0" and "Please note you agree to license your contribution to the TerraDrive Universe under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0". The latter is explicit in you being the owner and doing the licensing. The former is more akin to a warning (which is appropriate since it's telling you what will happen to your contribution once it is no longer 'yours'). I won't disagree that the text is ambiguous, but when combined with the copyright page that is linked (even the less clear older version) it's pretty obvious what was implied. Especially considering that as a company, it would be silly for Technomancer *not* to require ownership (for the reasons Tony laid out) and as such, a reasonable person should expect similar. Your very expressions of delight at contributing someplace where you could retain ownership/rights (as expressed in your blog and on here) should make it obvious that the situation as you viewed it was outside the norm.Skarsol 14:07, 11 February 2008 (EST) ::::I disagree, two reasons, the text at the bottom before that you just quoted is the default text, "Please note that all contributions to are released under (see )" Take a look at an old version of Wikipedia's http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning&oldid=2259383. It wasn't until 2005, that they went away from that format. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning&diff=next&oldid=9084521, but still retained the fact that the contributions were being licensed under the GFDL. It wasn't until december 05 when they explicitly stated that you were actually releasing your content under the GFDL (active voice vs passive voice) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning&diff=next&oldid=9084521. You also said that "it would be silly for Technomancer *not* to require ownership" I disagree. That's not how wikipedia works. states that the users own the content. Not the wikimedia foundation. There's nothing implicit in what's done that says that Technomancer owns the content. You also mentioned my "delight" I have done a lot of work at Wikipedia, and I assert (as does wikipedia) that from a copyright perspective, I own that content I contributed. In fact, the WP:Copyright page states "you can distribute article and list at least five (or all if fewer than five) principal authors on the title page (or top of the document), as explained in the text of the GFDL license." This is not really all that different from Wikipedia. McKay 14:51, 11 February 2008 (EST) :::::As it's the default text, all the more reason to consider the intent of Technomancer and the non-default text on the copyright page. I'm not sure why you keep comparing to Wikipedia as a non-profit encyclopedia is significantly different from a for-profit collaborative storytelling environment. Skarsol 15:09, 11 February 2008 (EST) ::::::I'm comparing to wikipedia to show that your arguments are invalid. ::::::"Please note that all contributions to TerraDrive Universe are considered to be released under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0" ::::::is virtually the same as ::::::"Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License." ::::::does this mean that Wikipedia owns the content I submit? No, it means that all content I sumbit is considered to be released under that license, i.e. by submitting, I am actually releasing my content under that license. ::::::Before 20 July no text anywhere stated that by submitting I was transferring ownership to Technomancer press. And it wasn't until 10 February that the copyright page was actually linked to on the edit submission page. Without a statement saying that I was trasferring ownership to TP, the content is mine. Period. A sentance "All content is owned by X" does not transfer ownership. McKay 03:11, 12 February 2008 (EST) :::::::Errr, what makes one sentance more/less valid that the other? :::::::How about we just agree to disagree and see about devising something to fix the issue as Tony asked?Skarsol 08:38, 12 February 2008 (EST) :::Quoting above: Compare these two statements: "Please note that all contributions to TerraDrive Universe are considered to be released under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0" and "Please note you agree to license your contribution to the TerraDrive Universe under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0". '' The problem with the first statement (which I wrote) is with the word "released" because it doesn't say released by ''who. What we meant was released by us as the copyright holders. However, the current notice is totally unambiguous and explicit (read the "in a nutshell" box). So we're only talking about content contributed before that went up (July 20), as being disputed in terms of IP ownership. However I don't want anyone to feel like we pulled the old switcheroo and slipped in a new notice so that we could steal their IP, so I'm willing to talk about the content provided after July 28 as well. This does not constitute a declaration that any entity other than Technomancer Press owns all the content on this website, however. (Have to say that for legal reasons) Again, how would you like to see this issue resolved? TonyHellmann 22:10, 13 February 2008 (EST) ::::Hmm, "agree to disagree" While that's kinda good and all, that's not really getting us somewhere. Tony has asked (again now) how we should resolve the issue. While I am the one vocalizing concerns, I'm not the only one who contributed content before a statement existed that ownership on content submitted is being transferred to Technomancer Press. They could try contacting those who submitted content, but they aren't going to get everyone. Technomancer Press needs to decide what to do with the content that was submitted before that point. I dare say that that content submitted before July 20 is probably more than 75% of TDU. Do they claim ownership and risk copyright infringment (lawsuits)? Or do they continue to credit those who submitted stuff before that date? McKay 02:41, 14 February 2008 (EST) ::::Oh, also, another issue with ownership. If Technomancer wants to own the content, then the section at the bottom that says "Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!" should probably be altered some. It's a bit ambiguous. The current way of owning everything is kinda seems a bit in contrary to the CC spirit. Does it mean that we can't pull from other CC:A sources? Because if we had some other CC:A sources, or any copyleft sources for that matter, because TP can't own the content, it can't be submitted? McKay 02:46, 14 February 2008 (EST) :::::Excellent point raised there. We can't accept other CC:A or any copyleft sources here on the wiki, as we can't own them. We'd have to follow their licensing rules to publish the material, and we want to keep this community (and ourselves) unencumbered by such requirements. Besides, if we don't own the content, we can't CC license it back to you. TonyHellmann 10:09, 25 February 2008 (EST) ::::::Hmm, that last thing you said makes me think you don't understand how copyleft works. It shouldn't matter who owns the content, as long as it is copyleft, then anyone can use it. No, you can't CC it back to us, but if it's copyleft, we can license it to ourselves anyway. But, I'll do as you ask, and change submission rules. McKay 01:58, 27 February 2008 (EST) :::::::Let me say it a different way: As a publishing entity, Technomancer Press will not publish work to which it does not clearly own all rights. Whoever owns material is who decides to license it to others (whether a CC license or any other type). We need to be the ones to own the material so WE can be the ones to license it. That way we can defend our copyright in court if need be. If YOU own the material and license it to Technomancer Press, and the TDL community, and then Shmuck Publishing decides to use your material and say THEY wrote it, then WE can't send them a cease and desist letter and/or sue them. We have to ask YOU to do that. Things are just cleaner all the way around if we own the content. And this part isn't up for discussion, anyway. That's our policy. The question before us is: What do you want to do about the material that was posted before the notice went up? Either you can agree that all rights belong to Technomancer Press, and in return we'll license it back to the community, or you can request we take the material down, which we will do. If you have a third option, I'm willing to entertain that as well. TonyHellmann 02:59, 11 March 2008 (EDT) ::::::::Okay, I understand that. You want full ownership of the content. That's fine. But you have appeared to have neglected my other questions: ::::::::#You have explicitly asked about what I'm doing about the content I claim I own, but I want to know what are you going to do about the rest of the content content submitted to the wiki that Technomancer Press doesn't own (somewhere between 75% and 99% of the wiki depends on what date we use as the drawing line) Risk lawsuits? Remove the content? Credit prior contributors? ::::::::#What about the content that was submitted to the wiki that was previously copyrighted but submitted "with permission" (there was a "do not submit copyrighted work without permission" notice)? ::::::::#I personally think that all content submitted before 2008 is probably not property of Technomancer press, because it lacked a "you transfer ownership to Technomancer Press" notice. Claiming "Technomancer press owns all content on this site." is not a sufficient notice. ::::::::Also, a couple new questions have come up: ::::::::#Having read through CC:A, it states that the "original author" needs to be attributed, not the owner of the copyright. How does Technomancer Press plan on releasing content from the wiki without attribution of the original author? ::::::::#I'm writing a video game where I've been thinking about including content from Terradrive. If I did decide to give the content I've contributed to TP, How do you think I should attribute the content? (Again, it's partially a CC:A issue. saying "ideas by McKay Salisbury" would satisfy that? Even if TP owns the content?) ::::::::#I guess the previous question comes down to the question I've been trying to form for a while. If you want to own all the content. Why are you licensing under CC:A at all? What benefit does that give you? ::::::::Well, those are the questions I can think of now. McKay 11:20, 11 March 2008 (EDT) :::::::::At this point, the argument is over who owns several hundred pages of Chinese Heavy Machinery Spam. Is this dead in the water? Should I maintain any interest in this a a potential table-top gaming system?TheNinjaPig 10:50, 24 July 2008 (EDT)